Nova Launcher May Have Just Received Its Final Update
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Nova Launcher effectively abandoned after key team left; app is unsupported.
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Unexpected 8.1.3 beta adds color tweaks, improved web search history, and redesigned Media and Weather cards.
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Update is year-old work; data/analytics practices unclear, so don't expect ongoing fixes or new features.
Last month, one of Android's most iconic home screen launchers announced its unfortunate demise. Nova Launcher's death was a long time coming , but it turns out the team had one more update up its sleeves. However, this unexpected update has some pretty big asterisks.
In case you missed it, founder Kevin Barry announced in September that he had left Branch Metrics, the company that acquired Nova Launcher in 2022. The development team has already been long gone, and with Kevin's departure, the app was essentially abandoned. We said our farewells and urged people to uninstall the unsupported app .
Surprisingly, users on Reddit (posts now removed) spotted an unannounced beta update this week, version 8.1.3, rolling out through the Play Store's beta channel. The update includes features like color customization for Nova Now, a better search history for web suggestions, and updated Cards with a redesigned Media Card and a new Weather Card. It even updates compatibility to support the latest Android versions. Sounds good, right? Not so fast.
While it's true that new features are rolling out, a former Nova developer took to Discord to explain the catch: this "new" 8.1.3 update is built on work that's over a year old. Former developer Rob Wainwright wrote on Discord:
"Please be aware that nobody in the original Nova Launcher team works at Branch Metrics anymore. While the majority of the changes in this update were built by the original team over a year ago, we can't make any promises regarding data collection or analytics."
That last line is pretty ominous. The reality is this is likely just the last of the original team's work finally getting cleared out. It's not new work, and it might not even be something you want on your device. The new features are cool, but this is almost certainly one of Nova's final updates. Without the original team or a new dedicated development effort, you can't count on future features or timely fixes for bugs that inevitably appear as Google changes Android with every major version.
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Source: Android Authority
